Students enjoy real rest
and relaxation in New Mexico

Josh Reiff
Staff Writer

A
tour bus full of WBU students as well as a fifteen passenger van full
of sponsors and their respective children embarked upon the Student Ministries’
annual Fall Break retreat to the Lifeway Glorieta Conference Center near
Santa Fe, NM.

The
over fifty person strong group utilized FBC Plainview and Wayland’s own
lodging facilities in order to evade the ever-present hectic schedule
of college life.

The
retreat’s days were purposefully unplanned by director Donnie Brown and
his thoughtful staff in order to allow students complete and total freedom
to undertake as little or as much as they wished in order get refreshment
from the daily grind against the renowned backdrop of orange and yellow
leaves covering every inch of Glorieta’s rolling terrain.

Some
students, such as seniors Keith Platte, Josh Milner, and Melissa O’Brien,
opted to scale the infamous “Mount Baldy,” a six-hour round-trip hike.
Still, other students jumped at the chance to spend the days doing next
to nothing in order to enjoy the beautiful setting. For example, this
reporter spent an afternoon enjoying a two-hour bath with the windows
open to the cool scent of the New Mexican pine trees.

Wayland-ers
stuck out like a tree in Plainview as they raided every form of Santa
Fe culture. From the Institute of American Indian Arts, to the jewelry
dealers in the square, all the way down to the Banana Republic and the
inescapable Starbucks, every nook and cranny of Santa Fe was Wayland-ized
by the end of the day.

The
retreat also included nightly worship services led by junior rejoice-member
Jeremy Harris and Greg Northcut, the student minister as FBC Tulia.

Northcut
spoke to the retreat-ers regarding letting God handle their burdens in
faith as Harris led the group in musical worship.

When
asked what part of the weekend stuck out the most to him, Donnie Brown
said, “(It was) seeing students who wouldn’t normally hang-out together
spend time with each other building relationships.”

Perhaps
the largest success as well as most memorable aspect of the retreat comes
in that context, students reaching out of their routine social contexts
to enrich and bond with the lives of their often-distant peers.